Fashion

Pierpaolo Piccioli’s debut couture collection for Balenciaga arrived at Paris Haute Couture Week as one of the most anticipated shows of the season, the culmination of a year spent studying the house’s archive since his departure from Valentino. Gigi Hadid’s return to the couture runway after a four-year absence gave the presentation an additional charge, her walk threading through a collection built around free-flowing silhouettes that felt effortless rather than engineered, feathers layered into extravagant sweeps of tulle, and a reworking of the codes Cristóbal Balenciaga himself established, the sack silhouette, the sculptural volumes, the negative space between body and fabric, all filtered through Piccioli’s own instinct for romanticism and proportion. Where his predecessor built a decade of provocation, Piccioli’s opening chapter in couture read instead as a study in ease, garments extravagant enough for the occasion yet grounded in the rhythms of a woman’s daily wardrobe, a vision he has described as central to redefining what couture at Balenciaga looks like under his direction.

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